


Fiona meets Young Alistair

by Starla-Nell (Princess_Nell)



Series: The Bournshire Boys [17]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Book: Dragon Age - The Calling, Bournshire monestary, elven ear hc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:29:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24632344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess_Nell/pseuds/Starla-Nell
Summary: So, look. I'm sick of Bioware women learning their lessons the hard way. idk if this makes any sense, but I feel like Fiona would worry about Alistair right after Maric disappeared, especially if she's also getting raven dreams. (See Maric Lost. This is another headcanon of mine.) So, just like the rest of this series, this is made up of my own headcanons, but I like to think my headcanons are canon-compliant. So here we go.
Relationships: Alistair & Fiona (Dragon Age)
Series: The Bournshire Boys [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/472279
Kudos: 3





	Fiona meets Young Alistair

**Author's Note:**

> So, look. I'm sick of Bioware women learning their lessons the hard way. idk if this makes any sense, but I feel like Fiona would worry about Alistair right after Maric disappeared, especially if she's also getting raven dreams. (See Maric Lost. This is another headcanon of mine.) So, just like the rest of this series, this is made up of my own headcanons, but I like to think my headcanons are canon-compliant. So here we go.

Fiona looked at her son’s school: a school for Templars. She’s not a Grey Warden anymore, and she didn’t really get permission from her Circle for this trip. Yet, she was compelled to make this visit, to be sure that life continued. Not that she and Maric… She didn’t even know what she and Maric ever were. A cryptic note about a debt come due and a sea voyage from which Maric disappeared. Anyway, Maric’s son Cailen was on the throne, true, but Cailen wasn’t _hers_. Cailen wasn’t Alistair.

She pulled the hood up around her head, around her ears before knocking on the gate to the town – an old castle complex. She got a room at the inn and went to “pray” at the Chantry every day, any time she wasn’t eating or sleeping. The Reverend Mother clearly took her for a pilgrim, though to what Fiona wasn’t sure. The truth was, she’d never been so pious in her life.

\---

Alistair was at his wit’s end. The quiet was grating on his nerves like he was a carrot, but he’d promised his favorite Sister he wouldn’t scream for a week. A foolish trade, perhaps, but if he didn’t keep it… would it matter? Well, he was allowed a few outlets. He went to the Chantry and joined some pilgrim at the shrine to chant as loudly as he could.

“You must know the Chant very well,” the pilgrim commented at the end of the stanza.

“Who? Me? You definitely have me mistaken for someone else.” Conversation wasn’t part of the deal, usually, but maybe it wouldn’t be horrible.

The woman—he didn’t know her, but she had black hair and fine features—examined him, not unfriendly but curious. “Fiona,” she said, holding out her hand and basically demanding an introduction. Was this Queen Anora, incognito? He’d thought she was supposed to be blonde, so probably not.

He smiled about the distraction anyway. “Alistair,” he replied, taking her hand like a prince. Crap. _Jokingly_ like a prince. Because he would never want to _really_ be a prince, or anything.

“Well, in any case,” Fiona said, “you were agitated when you came in here. Don’t you find comfort in the Prophet’s words?” It felt like a test, but she… had absolutely no authority over him.

Alistair shrugged and leaned to speak quietly. “I don’t know you from Andraste herself, so I feel safe telling you this. Maybe the Chant should have meaning to me, but it doesn’t, not really. My roommate will go on and on about why it matters, but I just don’t care. All I know is no one cares how loudly I chant. I am not really a good person.” Wait. Would she leave, knowing this?

She paused, but stayed. “Goodness comes in many forms,” she said, her voice resonant like something true. “It comes in the choices that you make, the results of those choices, but also in the intentions behind those choices.”

“That’s… helpful, actually. Are you a lay Sister or something?” No, you idiot, “You’re not wearing the robes,” Alistair said, unable to keep a teasing accusation from his voice to cover his own stupidity.

She laughed, which was, wow, that might be the easiest laugh he’s gotten in a while. “No, definitely not a lay Sister.” She lets him peek at her ears under her hood: pointed. Alistair should have known she was an elf from her build, but she continues, “The singing bothers my ears after awhile.”

“But…” Alistair tilted his head. “You were singing yourself, just now.”

Fiona smiles a little half-smile, just a little. “Have you ever had a song in the back of your head, just a bit of something, like someone humming in the next room?”

“Yeah,” said Alistair, realizing that was what bothered him so much about the quiet in the monastery. “You can’t quite catch the tune, like the singer is just out of hearing?”

Fiona tilts her head like a shrug. “I can hear the tune, but yes. That’s what being near lyrium is like for elves, or most of us, I think. When it’s close at hand, it’s beautiful. Some people love it.” She shrugs. “It’s better than some songs I’ve heard. Just… very persistent.”

“Is that why the Chantry doesn’t often have elves?” Alistair asked.

“That, and other reasons,” Fiona conceded, and Alistair nodded rather than look foolish for not knowing those other reasons.

“We should make a Chantry just for elves!” Alistair said.

“Ah, but would it make any difference?” Fiona asked. “So much of the Chantry’s power is wrapped up in control of the lyrium trade. Elves in such a Chantry would have nothing the main Chantry would want to hear.”

“Power for mages,” Alistair said, nodding. “I wonder how the elven mages deal with the singing, being so near to lyrium all the time?” Alistair said, and noticed the woman’s lip twitch again. “I’m serious!” he lied, mugging for her like she were a Chantry Sister, or… or something. “They’re trapped in their towers for so long, which is where the lyrium is kept and the veil is so thin, how do they not… Huh.”

The woman gave Alistair a quizzical look. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Alistair said, waving it off, “I think I just understood something about a friend of mine, very squirrelly guy.”

“Be careful who you tell that you have mage friends,” said the woman without moving her lips, in an even tone that seemed to carry to his ears and stop. Sotto voce, that’s what it’s called. “Or elven ones, for that matter.”

Alistair blinked. “But I didn’t…”

“Careful of context,” she said more normally. “Make a joke if you need more time to think.”

“Riiiiiight, I’m good at that.” Alistair blew his breath out, trying to blow the serious moment away. It stayed put. “The mages, though, they’re all trapped, I’m trapped. I have more freedom, or something, but it’s like everyone who’s anyone is telling me what to do.”

“If you could do anything else, what would it be?” Fiona asked.

Alistair blinked. “That’s terrifying.” He meant it. When he thought of never having anyone tell him what to do, it was like emptiness opened into his future, an abyss he could only jump into. His mind went blank, and he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Well, then, if you could follow anyone’s orders, who would it be?” Fiona pressed.

Shape and form came back to Alistair. Stories, words from Eamon, books he’d read. He’d want to fight. It was the only thing he was really good at. He couldn’t see fighting for Arl Eamon, living in Redcliffe again. If he were with any other Bann or Arl, he might be ordered to fight _against_ Eamon, and he couldn’t do that, either. The Royal Army? No, ultimately he’d be carrying out the orders of his own brother, and that was just weird. Besides the fears that would arise when he was found in Cailen’s army. Fears of a plot or a coup d'état. Nonsense.

There was one group of fighters Alistair knew of that always did the right thing. Their enemy wasn’t even human, so how do you mess that up? They fought a mindless horde that could destroy entire countries, could have destroyed Thedas several times over.

“The Grey Wardens,” Alistair said definitively, gazing up at the statue of Andraste and nodding. “They have a good mission, not so messy, none of this he-said-she-said, no dangerous _people_. Just monsters to fight and a Blight to end.”

The woman looked like he’d slapped her, but she recovered and gritted out, “The Grey Wardens are no place for children.”

Alistair shrugged off some sort of weird discomfort. “Yes, but maybe once I’m trained I could be recruited? I could never be that lucky,” he admitted. “It’s just a stupid dream.”

“Keep dreaming, maybe it will come true,” Fiona said in a more normal voice, gathering herself in a clear dismissal.

“Thanks, I will,” Alistair said, smiling. She was nice. Almost… motherly. More so than the Revered Mother, anyway. He turned back to the candle-lit shrine and realized he didn’t feel the need to scream anymore, and rose himself to go back to his dorm.

\---

Dreams. Wishes. Hopes for the future. That’s what Fiona had needed to know. If her boy ever did become a Grey Warden, he would be a good one. She’d visit Duncan first, but then Fiona had work to do.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think they both gain a little something from this encounter, both enriched in some way. Of course, this also covers why Duncan plucked Alistair out from more-skilled combatants at the tourney.


End file.
